lilangel wrote:I started doing some research and then dove into feeding raw. A lot of how I feed is trial and error. Some of it is gleaned advice from others who feed raw but I often find many raw feeders to be way too anal about things. I am no longer overly concerned with calcium phosphorous ratios or pancreatitis, kidney failure, perforations etc. After feeding raw for long enough, you begin to see your dogs differently, you become more observant and change things if necessary. It is actually quite fun to prepare meals and watch your dog enjoy them. It is telling to see how changing something, like removing salmon oil and not replacing those nutrients, can cause a change in your dogs within one to two weeks, or how much a dog enjoys a change in meat source. I appreciate my dogs more as I feel that preparing food for another builds a relationship. Scooping kibble is just putting fuel in the machine. I actually think it is fun to find new ways to feed these guys... and I'm a vegetarian.

My experience to a tee - perfectly articulates my philosophy now!

Just a funny addition - my husband's initial reaction was that I had gone right round the bend. Disgusting, dangerous, expensive, time-consuming... I can't tell you how many times he has returned after an outing with one of our dogs and handed me a phone number or email address from someone who noticed how gorgeous or sweet smelling or soft or whatever our dogs are and were "converted" by him on the spot. "Can you give this lady a call?"

I guess I sorta measure, but it is like "big handful, little handful." When I was making meals this morning I noticed that I actually do give the bigger dogs a slightly bigger handful than the little dogs, so my statement about the dogs all getting exactly the same amounts of everything except meat source is a bit off. Like if I am portioning out chicken livers I might give the bigger dog whatever liver chunk I grab but I'll break off the extra lobes if it is for a little dog. If I pick up hearts I'll give the big dogs one extra heart. If I am scooping bee pollen I give a heaping scoop to the big'uns and a level scoop to the lil guys. I never noticed that before.

I think I'm gonna order some rabbits or guinea pigs from Hare-today and try that again as an occasional meal sorta thing. You whole feeders have sparked my interest. Wait a minute I might actually have an old rabbit in the freezer!

When I started feeding I fed with extreme variety in each meal, pre designed, and precise.

Work, school, training, and life in general caught up with me and now I feed like that once a month. More often than not I use kibble for the financial benefit and supplement with huge chunks of meats for the time benefit.

As I type this my foster staffy is outside gnawing away at a few lbs of hard frozen cow. It's keeping him busy, stimulated, and giving me the free time to sit and work on some needed work (okay, I lied.. I should be doing that but here I am on PBF).

The other dogs today were given chicken breasts, whole apples (boy did that confuse the malinois, I usually cut them up for them) and will be getting marrow bones when I leave for work.

I supplement with kibble meals as they're in a bowl, with my raw meals I don't bowl feed usually so it would be more of an effort which for one reason or another I have chosen not to afford.

I do agree, 6 years ago I had a blast making meals and it really was a bonding experience. I try to spice up meals every day just a little bit but with the time and money in my pocket I really prefer prey model diet coupled with kibble on the busier days.

AllisonPibbleLvr wrote:Is anyone aware of any studies showing the pros/cons of RAW feeding?

Studies have to be funded. Virtually an impossibility... Vet schools won't do it as their funding comes from Proctor & Gamble (Iams, Eukanuba), Colgate-Palmolive (Science Diet)... There are a ton of people who have done it with great results for years and that is what gave me the peace of mind I needed to take the plunge. Four years later - I will never go back.

If your pediatrician handed you a bag of "franken-food" marked "complete and balanced," "meets AMA standards" and told you to feed it to your child every meal, every day, for the rest of her life you would run, not walk, to find a new pediatrician. Correct? Yet we don't bat an eye when our vets do exactly that. Up until four years ago - I went right along with it.

That is not an attack. It's a description of a cartoon I saw that pretty much sealed the deal for me! (Along with Ann Martin's Foods Pets Die For.)

I am amazed and delighted with the general population change from when I started raw til now. If I tell people I feed raw meat to my dogs most just say cool or shrug or are interested in trying it. Six years ago, maybe seven now, people would reel back in horror and preach the death of my dogs and those around me.

I'm impressed with the progress, to say the least.

I am a raw feeder who appreciates kibble. There are good and bad out there and they all serve a purpose. I will likely always have some kibble on hand but I do prefer feeding more raw than kibble when time and money permits.

My biggest complaint (and those who know me well know this) is the danged poop. I rate a ton of what I feed on poop, I have been told I have an unhealthy amount of focus on poop quality. But really when you have 5 dogs in a yard with a very small poop area and you're picking it up at least twice a day you really change your poop values. Even more so when I pick up clients dogs poop at work and their poop smells like their filthy, nasty, oddly sweet, canned mush they feed... blergh!

AllisonPibbleLvr wrote:Studies have to be funded. Virtually an impossibility... Vet schools won't do it as their funding comes from Proctor & Gamble (Iams, Eukanuba), Colgate-Palmolive (Science Diet)...

This is a MYTH that I would really like to see stop. Those companies do not prevent studies from happening. Unfortunately, there is little to no interest in the veterinary community, and no funding from companies as individuals generally prepare their own diets.

Even if studies were performed, it would not apply to every home-cooked diet out there due to the huge amounts of variability and a high rate of poorly designed diets.

I agree, this would be an extremely hard thing to study, raw diet should be called custom diet. Just look at this thread and we all feed a bit differently. I'm not sure how you can study that in a quantitative way.

AllisonPibbleLvr wrote:Studies have to be funded. Virtually an impossibility... Vet schools won't do it as their funding comes from Proctor & Gamble (Iams, Eukanuba), Colgate-Palmolive (Science Diet)...

This is a MYTH that I would really like to see stop. Those companies do not prevent studies from happening. Unfortunately, there is little to no interest in the veterinary community, and no funding from companies as individuals generally prepare their own diets.

Having worked in research industry (The Salk Institute and in private pharmaceutical research closely aligned with UCSD) I can tell you the world of research is both POLITICAL and INDUSTRY driven. IT IS ABSOLUTELY A FACT THAT PROFESSORS, DEPARTMENTS, and UNIVERSITIES ARE AT THE MERCY OF BIG BUSINESS. Professors know their ability to pay their mortgage, their kids schooling, and all the other life benefits rests in their ability to manage their reputation as a researcher and to maintain the financial ties the research organization needs to maintain funding sources.

UNTIL YOU'VE HAD YOUR BOSS ASK YOU TO COOK THE NUMBERS SO HE "CAN PAY THE MORTGAGE", you have no idea the pressure many in research face. Yes, many begin their careers naive and wanting to pursue good research, but time corrupts, especially when you see others being heavily influenced and financially rewarded by BigPharma and CPG Firms. Here's a great example to give you something to chew on:

Dr. Joseph Biederman, M.D. is a professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Chief of the Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and arguably the poster boy for Big Pharma conflicts of interest.

He is, according to the New York Times, also the world’s most prominent advocate of diagnosing bipolar disorder in even the tiniest children and of using anti-psychotic medicines to treat the disease, even though much of his work has been underwritten by drug makers for whom he privately consults. His work personally helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder. Two of his most recent controversies: the use of anti-psychotic drugs in small children, and conflicts of interest in medicine.

Why do you think nearly every person you meet thinks they have ADD, ADHD, Autism, "Anxiety", etc.? The pharmaceutical companies know the best way to produce a revenue stream is to NOT SOLVE THE UNDERLYING ISSUE, instead they seek to produce an annuity where you make the monthly, quarterly, or annual trek to the doctors to refill your prescription. It is the same issue with dog food. The companies know the issues they are causing (...talk to a few food chemists if you disagree with me, it is scary the details they know - here's a good overview of HFCS chemistry from UCSF - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM), but now they have created a "supplemental" industry, oh, and tie that to the derm meds, manufactured and distributed in partnership, and they've now got a pet owner who acts just like an annuity.

And the great thing about pets is that owners are more likely to adhere to treatment protocols, unlike human patients.

So, given what I've discussed here, MsK, prove to me this is a myth. When I've lived it, had my heart broken by it, and moved away from research after seeing where my life would go...

Science is certainly not the be all and end all answer as it stands, nutritionally, medically, behaviorally or otherwise. Maybe some day it will be but there is just so much 1)that we do not know and 2) corruption. Let's not even get into something like PLACEBOS. Talk about the wool being pulled over the eyes of the world. The pharmaceutical industry has done a real number on the world by creating that construct and paying for the truth to remain buried in those cooked books.

El_EmDubya wrote:Having worked in research industry (The Salk Institute and in private pharmaceutical research closely aligned with UCSD) I can tell you the world of research is both POLITICAL and INDUSTRY driven. IT IS ABSOLUTELY A FACT THAT PROFESSORS, DEPARTMENTS, and UNIVERSITIES ARE AT THE MERCY OF BIG BUSINESS. Professors know their ability to pay their mortgage, their kids schooling, and all the other life benefits rests in their ability to manage their reputation as a researcher and to maintain the financial ties the research organization needs to maintain funding sources.

VET SCHOOLS do not get funding from proctor and gamble, they are state funded, and when state funding disappears, it comes out of my wallet. Tuition isn't increasing at 2-5 times the rate of inflation for absolutely no reason.

Individual researchers may get additional grants elsewhere, but this is not the case in vet school, at least not on the campus research facilities where I was employed. Those companies have zero interest in what vet schools do or do not do.

There may be a LACK of funding in certain sectors, but its not because anyone is stepping on toes, its because there's a lack of big business to fund the studies.

When I was in school, the biggest funding came from NATURAPET. A company trying to do everything in its power to compete with the big 4, including paying students wages when no other students were paid by the other companies. But of course, since Naturapet made foods that were trendy, nobody says a negative word against them...

AllisonPibbleLvr wrote:Studies have to be funded. Virtually an impossibility... Vet schools won't do it as their funding comes from Proctor & Gamble (Iams, Eukanuba), Colgate-Palmolive (Science Diet)...

This is a MYTH that I would really like to see stop. Those companies do not prevent studies from happening. Unfortunately, there is little to no interest in the veterinary community, and no funding from companies as individuals generally prepare their own diets.

Having worked in research industry (The Salk Institute and in private pharmaceutical research closely aligned with UCSD) I can tell you the world of research is both POLITICAL and INDUSTRY driven. IT IS ABSOLUTELY A FACT THAT PROFESSORS, DEPARTMENTS, and UNIVERSITIES ARE AT THE MERCY OF BIG BUSINESS.

I wonder about this. For example, many animal shelters, including the biggest ones, feed Purina food (Friskies, Purina One, Pro Plan), or Hills, or [insert big industry pet food]. The food is donated to these shelters/shelter hospitals. Now, even non-raw feeding shelter/vet staff know that this food is garbage... It is painful to serve this crap out to sick or needy animals. So, okay, it is fed out to homeless animals or low income pets because of budget reasons, but to condone handing out of trial sized bags of the same junk food to new adopters, and the hanging of pet food posters, and the requested attendance of staff to big industry nutrition lectures, and the general creation of a mythical pet nutrition Is this not a case of being at the mercy of big industry pet nutrition?

The best customer for all the foods mentioned above is the general public, not shelters. People buy that food because it's well marketed, inexpensive and readily available. Most dogs do well enough on it and people like feeding it.

buckaroo wrote:The best customer for all the foods mentioned above is the general public, not shelters. People buy that food because it's well marketed, inexpensive and readily available. Most dogs do well enough on it and people like feeding it.

They live. Which is the goal of feeding trials... (Which don't last more than a few months so the cumulative effects of poor nutrition over a number of years are not at issue.) They spend all their money on advertising then sell it at the grocery store. Exposure and convenience.

I used to work at a pet "health food store." One of my customers was a big muckedy muck for Mars (Pedigree). "I wouldn't feed that crap to my dog if my life depended on it." (True story, personal experience, actual words. He fed packaged raw and Orijen...)

I understand why the shelters feed the donated stuff - they are usually so short on money it just makes sense although if I were queen of the world things would be different. But I agree that promoting the food to adopters is a sad state of affairs, but probably a requirement for their "generosity"...

Personally I look at it as "it could be worse" and at least the dogs are adopted and being fed. Some people cannot afford raw (yes, I know the stats but places like vegas make life much harder to feed raw, much more expensive) or acana, etc, but that doesn't make them less than perfectly loving homes.